make your own g88

[SteveTheShadow]

Nice
What are the brown things- & their purpose

Ps- transformer ordered

I wouldn’t worry about those; they were silver mica bypass caps for both sides of the power supply. They have been removed since the pic was taken, as I didn’t like the detrimental effect they had on the overall presentation. They made the sound ‘hi-fi’ at the expense of the music.

[Vinyl-ant]

Silver mica bypass caps
They sounded crap so they aren't in there any more

[karatestu]

I don't bother with small bypass caps. Don't they belong right next to the load ? The power amplifier boards (and phono board regulators) have low value decoupling caps already.

[Daniel Quinn]

I don't use them as the doc didn't.

[SteveTheShadow]

I’ve tried bypasses loads of times and they’ve always degraded the sound. Why I persist with this stupidity, I’m sure I don’t know.

On the subject of this reworking of the Phono1; people often talk about night and day differences, and I have been as guilty of this nonsense and anyone else, but the results of this power supply upgrade do come into this night/day category. And it’s not about bass, midrange, treble or detail; more about the big increase in the sensation of a music performance happening between, behind, and in front of the speakers. Stuff just hanging together and solidity is where it’s at with this upgrade.

Muddling on musical peaks, where it either goes all mushy, or turns harsh, is absent, which leads to the inevitable conclusion, that phono stages need a huge amount of headroom built into the power supply, not only to cope with musical peaks and reproduce strong vocal sibilants cleanly, but also ticks, scratches and surface noise, that like it or not, are a part of the vinyl playback situation.

This requirement for a big power supply is no mystery to experienced phono stage designers such as Nick or the Doc. I know the Doc banged on about it for years but it’s hard to explain to someone, when they’ve never heard the benefits. I mean a phono stage takes a 4mV signal and boosts it up to possibly 1V rms to drive a preamp stage - tiny signals in comparison to those a power amp is dealing with, but there you go, the evidence is there - phonos benefit greatly from big power supplies, so much so it’s unreal.

[Daniel Quinn]

As far as amps go, I learnt 2 things. Power supplies are important and capacitors are the work of the devil, throw as many away as possible

You will of course find all this info in the interview with Richard done in about 1980.

[Latteman]

Hey Steve- do u accept lodgers ?

[karatestu]

You must be hoping that eventually you drop on a combination of caps that works. Hope is a powerful thing.

The mods you and a few others have done to the phono stage has been on my to do list since i bought the phono1 years ago. Zero progress though as the vinyl side of my system has been completely ignored so far. I have a couple of Avondale Audio 100VA EI transformers (the same as i have on my tweeter amp front ends) to use for my phono amp project. They both have twin centre tapped secondary windings which will enable me to effectively make a phono 3 clone. Need to knock up a couple of LM3*7 regulators as well. It will happen before long.

I have always banged on about distance between transformers and the load. I did some experiments quite a number of years a go which enabled me to move the transformers of all my kit around whilst playing music. I had my stuff laid out on 60cm sq sheets of chipboard like i do now. The difference in the music was plain to hear between different positions. I concluded that the more distance i could get between them the better. I even found that distance between different transformers was important but not as important than proximity to sensitive circuitry and regulators.

Of course it was poo pooed by the those who know better . It wasn't subtle though and i could move the transformers WHILST still listening to the music just to prove i wasn't imagining it. Doc was one of the only people who agreed with me. The usual answer rolled out to discredit me is "well there is loads of very good sounding kit out there with transformers close to everything else ". Very true but it could be made to sound even better imo.

This is why you will always see my inferior efforts laid out with transformers well away from everything else. Even my rack was designed with this in mind. Toroids tend to have stronger stray field through the hole in the middle in both directions. So i got as much distance between the levels as possible and tried to arrange the transformers all on one side so transformers are above transformers. People forget to think in the vertical plane .

[karatestu]

As far as amps go, I learnt 2 things. Power supplies are important and capacitors are the work of the devil, throw as many away as possible

You will of course find all this info in the interview with Richard done in about 1980.

I agree strongly

[SteveTheShadow]

One more thing I’d like to do with the Phono1 is a mono/stereo facility, but how to do that is something I’ll have to find out.